The painter’s silhouette floated on Grand Lake.

His hidden eyes saw me well—two ones

unique, contrasting Jack Pine water with some 

consciousness or foreshortening, awake

on the surface. I locked oars for a wave

but he sketched on as two blue herons spooned

in the air and flirted with mirrored spruce,

their dying cry drying my throat’s ‘hey!’ 

Drifting on, non-subject, no matter,

I stormed the painter’s shack, boat unmoored,

to piss my memory onto his shriveled boards,

stopping at failing nerve and bladder.

Then on McCaul in lamp-lit galleries find

what centuries laughed at for the first time.

Roy (he/she/they) is a queer, non-binary, polyamorous, Chinese-Canadian poet living in Brooklyn where they work in data. They have had work published in The Anomaly, The Windsor Review, Prairie Fire, and upcoming in CanLit.

@kickoflegend (IG/Twitter)